


Because Six Ate Seven

by VexLonely



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Draco Malfoy Likes to Garden, Dramatic Draco Malfoy, F/M, Healer Draco Malfoy, Healer Hermione Granger, Hermione is a Little Bit Touched Starved, Notepads, Secret Neighbors, St Mungo's Hospital, TasteofSmut 2020, Training, sight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:33:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25478473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VexLonely/pseuds/VexLonely
Summary: Draco Malfoy had started gardening for stress relief, but looking down at his delicate failures, he seethed.He had never seen Number Seven out in the garden, had never crossed their path in the posh St. Mungo’s housing where they lived. He blamed the wizarding world for enabling his antisocial tendencies. With a floo inside most flats and apparition at one’s fingertips, who needed to linger in a hallway?
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 14
Kudos: 291
Collections: Taste of Smut Fest





	Because Six Ate Seven

Draco Malfoy couldn’t identify which of his neighbors was growing pea plants and kale in space Number Seven of his building’s community garden plot, but as the resident of the adjacent Number Six, he was inflamed at their audacity.

If his green-thumbed neighbor would only keep their freewheeling vegetables out of his space, he’d admit that their dying pea blossoms had also attracted nice local pollinators to his shrivelfigs. Instead, he held a grudge. The nuisance next door never weeded their plot worth a damn. Today, he discovered that their garden had whelped voracious magical weeds overnight, choking out Draco's second attempt at a crop of moondew. 

Growing his own potions ingredients was a hobby he’d picked up after war when he was on house arrest. Trapped in the manor, Draco had been permitted access to the grounds. As far as he remembered, the Dark Lord had never set foot amongst Narcissa’s planter beds. 

He had started gardening for stress relief, but looking down at his delicate failures, he seethed.

He had never seen Number Seven out in the garden, had never crossed their path in the posh St. Mungo’s housing where they lived. Draco blamed the wizarding world for enabling his antisocial tendencies. With a floo inside most flats and apparition at one’s fingertips, who needed to linger in a hallway? Even his post was delivered directly to his window by owl.

Not twenty minutes later, he drew blood trying to create an earthen border between their plots and the last ounce of his patience went out the window. 

Waving his wand so that his gardening tools made their way back into the small tool shed provided by the building, Draco stalked toward the elevator. 

He hated a perfect stranger and it was time to let them know it. 

Once through his doorway, he transferred the note he’d begun to write in his head onto the weighty parchment pad he preferred from Tomes & Scrolls. 

_Wretched Number Seven,_

_Do attempt to keep your sorry excuses at botany from going to flower, lest we dabble in eugenics. My effectively-neutered moondew has borne your kale’s half-breed spawn._

_Contemptuously Yours,_

_Number Six_

He stormed into the hallway and flung the whole notepad under the gap in their door with an indulgent grin. 

Content, Draco returned to his apartment and poured himself a strong whisky. It was only 7PM, but he’d go to bed soon. His current round of trainee shifts at St. Mungo’s were an entire day long, followed by two days off. They tested his endurance. 

Recently, his days off had been split between the garden and appeasing his mother by dating society witches. He was exhausted. 

Draco ordered in curry from down the block with a weary voice, and promptly fell asleep on top of his imported ptarmigan-down duvet. 

Xxx

Hermione Granger came through her floo on wobbling feet. 

Resting her arm against the back of her sofa for balance, she shed her bag and made to remove her scarf. 

She was both enamored by the work and disgusted by the hours at St. Mungo’s. Honestly, who was at their peak performance when they’d been on the trauma floor for eighteen hours? 

She had half a mind to complain to her shift superiors but at least she wasn’t the only one. Each trainee in their program had to adjust to the chaos when they started out. 

Her shift partner was Padma Patil, and the two girls had had one for the record books. 

A muggle school teacher from Liverpool somehow spread a flaming wizarding flu to twenty-three of his primary school students, and the first nine hours of their shift ensured at least one screaming, recently-obliviated six-year-old around each corner of their floor. Since she’d grown up with muggles, the other trainees had looked to her for guidance all day, as if muggle children weren’t just that: children. 

The next sixteen hours had been a free-for-all of emergency walk in visits and time at the triage desk.

It was exhausting.

Discarding her scrubs, Hermione put the kettle on. 

She felt a brief pang that no one was there to welcome her home as she leaned against her kitchen counter. No cozy partner was curled up in her bed, no neat portions of leftover dinner waited for her in the fridge. She wasn’t _lonely,_ per say— but Hermione Granger wouldn’t deny the sense of _loneliness_ that overcame her at the end of a particularly long day. 

She fell asleep quickly, awakening to late morning sun and a horrific crook in the side of her neck at half-past eleven. Bleary-eyed and in pain, she stretched long and slow. Rubbing her eyes, the witch’s gaze caught on what looked like parchment near the shoe rack by her door. 

Hermione cast a wordless summoning charm, too unbothered to leave the couch. The message was written on the buttery page of a notepad that she recognised from the window at Tomes & Scrolls, and as she read, she grit her teeth. 

_What a pompous git!_

Hermione assumed from the tone of the letter that the tenant of Number Six was a man, and regretted for the first time her lack of interaction with her peers. 

She’d inherited apartment Number Seven and all that came with it when the previous trainee had failed out of the program. She had no idea who lived next to her. After a delay with her St. Mungo’s housing paperwork, she’d just moved in a couple of weeks ago, and hadn’t explored the place on her day off. 

The subject of her neighbor’s ire, the plots in their community garden, she hadn’t touched. 

Apparently, her predecessor had left the garden with as much disarray as he had their trainee program, and her next door neighbor was too busy on their high horse to knock on her door like a regular adult.

She cracked her neck, stretched again, and picked up a pen. 

Xxx

Draco Malfoy was covered in mucus and wanted nothing more than to shower. 

He locked eyes with the attending medi-witch and used a small severing charm to puncture a bulbous sac hanging from the back of their patient, a wizard who’d made an error in self-transfiguration. 

The fluid that oozed down to the containment floor was a bright red that reminded Draco of blood, despite their chart’s evidence to the contrary. 

“Steady on, Malfoy,” she shot across the unconscious wizard’s chest. The magically-induced coma that they’d put him in was for his own good, sparing the young man the memory of having his sacs slit open. 

Draco drained a few more in quick succession, following them with a requisite cleaning spells. Summoning his suture kit from a cabinet nearby, Draco cracked tired fingers. 

It turned out that most of his training at St. Mungo’s involved hours of being covered in various infectious liquids so vile that the promise of a scourgify could only relieve so much. 

Afterwards, they bandaged the sacs and discharged the patient to the fourth floor. Draco was in the small scrub-out station trying not to fall asleep, scrubbing every millimeter of his fingernails clean. 

“Nice work, Malfoy.” His attending said to him. 

The medi-witches changed every day as part of the training program. Maybe it made him a git, but he never remembered their names. 

He nodded and thanked her in reply, and went walking down the hallway to the locker room. Considering his near recent past, Draco was surprised when anyone paid him a compliment. 

Healing came naturally to him, thank Merlin, or he’d have had a much tougher go of it to start. As it was, he was content with working at St. Mungo’s, despite the hours. He owed the Wizarding World something better, he was certain. If sorting out their mis-transfigured nephews was what redeemed his actions, he’d do it gladly and well. 

The staff locker room was large, magically enhanced, and had several doors alongside the walls which led to small rooms that held cots for sleeping. 

When he was pulling the clasp on his bag shut, a door opened behind him and Padma Patil stepped out from it. 

“Malfoy.” She acknowledged him briefly. 

“Patil. Back out on rounds?” 

The witch sighed, pulling her long hair up into a bun. “I have to go relieve Hermione so she can nap. We’re on hour fourteen.” 

Draco tried and failed to force the memory of a bright-eyed girl with a colossal head of hair from intruding into his mind’s eye. So Granger and Patil were shift partners. 

He’d yet to be assigned one, despite it being his third week of training. Draco grimaced. Though their entire schedules were unbearable, there was a special disdain held by the trainees for their middle hours on the floor. Almost everyone crashed from exhaustion at some point and had to sleep, however briefly. 

“I don’t envy you that.” Draco replied, regathering himself. He ducked out the door with a polite “Goodnight.” 

Padma made a noncommittal noise in return and Draco hurried to the apparition point, exhausted yet unable to prevent himself from checking the hallways for Hermione Granger. 

When he arrived home to his flat, his notepad lay face up in his living space, covered in aggressive inky strokes. 

“ _Endlessly daft Number Six,_

_How dare you? Do you really think I’d be such a horrendous plant owner as to let my own crops overgrow? What kind of healer would I be then?_

_You’re an idiot._

_The assault on your plants was entirely misblamed, for, unbeknownst to me, I inherited this green plot from its previous tenants, and all of its delinquent weeds too. Unfortunately for you, my schedule is too busy to give a damn about the garden. Deal with it as you might a petty infestation of carnivorous chrysanthemums and then consider it your own._

_In distaste,_

_Number Seven”_

Draco resisted the urge to throw his whole notepad in the fireplace, but settled for an _incendio_ on the single page. 

Xxx

On the third hour of her shift, Hermione had slipped in a pile of vomit. 

Not twenty minutes later, she’d had to put a toddler in a full body-bind in order to vaccinate him against this year’s strain of wizarding influenza. She hated taking bodily autonomy away from scared kids, but one asymptomatic child could spread the virus to a whole community. 

It was a small, but morally exhausting price to pay. 

She and Padma had been trying to subvert their schedules by taking mid shift naps while the other dealt with their ever-growing pile of chart notes. So far, aside from one evening when Hermione had accidentally opened a sleep room to find fellow trainee Ernie MacMillan masturbating, it was working smoothly. 

She didn’t blame herself. The doors had locks, and Ernie’s bright red apology had been hilarious and mortifying. 

It wasn’t the first time that she’d seen more than she expected of some former Hogwarts classmates. She and Padma had gotten comfortable changing out of their scrubs in the staff locker quickly, and Theodore Nott, despite his presence in St. Mungo’s as a pharmacy consultant, was known to make a shirtless exit from the sleep rooms once a week or so. 

And then there was Draco Malfoy. 

Elitist snob and pointy-faced child he was no longer. He’d filled out sometime in the years since Hogwarts, and he hardly ever spoke a word to anyone anymore. 

_“Keeps to himself, mostly.” her attending said after Draco passed them in the hallway looking dead on his feet. “They still don’t have a partner that’s willing to work with him, so he’s been spending most shifts with just an attending.”_

_“What?” Hermione exclaimed. “I’m the newest recruit. I joined just three weeks back, shouldn’t I have been his partner by default?”_

_The attending looked at her in a way that Hermione hated, like she was too slow and had missed the point._

_“St. Mungo’s would have prevented it automatically as a conflict of interest.” At Hermione’s curious silence, he continued. “You’re on public record as being tortured in his home while he watched. I’m surprised they even let him in the program considering everything that happened in Malfoy Manor.”_

_Her mind suddenly filled with flashes of an emaciated blonde teenager with dark robes and frightened eyes. Hermione nodded, but her sense of justice couldn’t stop her from blurting the words._

_“Well that can’t be fair.”_

_The other wizard looked at her as if she’d grown a second head. “Fair?”_

_"To do the schedule of two trainees?"_

Hermione shook her head free of the memory. 

Draco Malfoy hadn’t crossed her mind in years, but now she saw him everywhere. He’d come up to apologize to her once, and she’d brushed him off. She hadn’t wanted to dredge up the memories he stirred in her in public, but had appreciated his efforts nonetheless. Truth was, Hermione had pitied Draco in the thick of the war, despite how nasty he was as a child. 

These days, she’d notice him down the long hallway that supported the triage rooms. She’d spot his blonde hair six wizards ahead of her in the coffee queue. 

They never talked.

On her way home, Hermione stopped by the garden plots in their building, hoping for a glance at the neighbor who sent her the note underneath her door. 

There was no one in the garden. 

Hermione almost laughed aloud when she saw the plot that was attributed to her. Number Seven had overgrown to the point where some of the smaller plant offshoots underneath the large plants had died off because they couldn’t see the sun. 

Her garden plot was brilliant and wild and teeming with magic— for a moment she regretted telling Number Six to destroy it if he felt so inclined. 

Her neighbor's plot was full of neat and tidy rows that had obviously been planted according to weather specifications. If it weren't’ for the choking weeds spilling from her plot into theirs, their garden would have been beautiful and clean. 

Instead it was a mess. She understood their rage. 

Too exhausted to bring herself to linger outside, she moved back inside the building. When she unlocked the front door, the large brass number seven swung away from her to reveal a short missive on the same notepad that had been slung under her door days ago.

_“Seven,_

_You’re infuriating in a very specific way. Do you not imagine that every other trainee is at least as busy as you?_

_Tell me one good reason why I should double my burden while you take no responsibility for yours._

_Six”_

Hermione groaned, understanding that on some level her neighbor was right. She’d written her first response in the fresh rage of the morning, without setting eyes on her garden plot. 

It was a lot of work.

She considered her options while cooking dinner, and finally replied later that night. Hermione wandered out into the hallway with a glass of wine and slid the notepad back under her neighbor’s door. 

Xxx

“ _Trainee Malfoy, you are called to triage room six immediately. Trainee Malfoy to triage room six._ ”

Draco quickly rinsed the bubbles off his hands and left the room with wet and shaky palms. 

Heart in his throat, Draco left the room with wide strides. The hallways felt normal, adding to his sense of unease. He made it to the emergency quickly, breezing past the desk and back into the hallway that supported the triage rooms. 

His mother was seated on a bench in the hallway near what Draco knew was triage room six, Teddy Lupin beneath her well-dressed arm. 

Narcissa raised bright eyes to her son. 

“Andromeda?” he inferred. A nod.

“They’ve just transferred her out to a different ward. She suffered a massive stroke in her dining room before Teddy found her and summoned their house elf.” 

The toddler in question had noticed Draco’s approach and promptly flung himself around his ankles. Draco patted the boy’s hair, currently a light peach color, and exhaled slowly. 

“Is he—?” Draco began. 

“Teddy’s alright. Quiet, but the mindhealer said it's too early to tell how he’ll be affected long-term. Weren’t we just discussing a trip to the cafeteria for some ice cream, Teddy?” 

At Narcissa’s mention of dessert, Teddy bolted back to her side. 

“Would you like to join?” his mother asked. 

“I have to go report back to my attending before my shift is over,” said Draco, shaking his head. “Can I floo call you later?” 

Narcissa nodded, and led Teddy down the hall. 

As soon as they left his view Draco sagged against the wall, nervous frissions of energy running down his legs. He slid a shaky hand through his hair. Since the end of the war and his father’s subsequent incarceration, his whole sense of family had been centered around what was left of the Blacks. 

Andromeda had full custody of her grandson until the boy went to Hogwarts, at which point Potter could step in as the boy’s godfather. She reconnected with Narcissa when the responsibilities of raising the boy alongside grieving her husband and daughter became too much. He, Andromeda, Teddy, and Narcissa were all that the Blacks had left of each other, unless Draco counted Potter. 

He didn’t. 

A delicate clearing throat jolted him. 

“I take it that they didn’t tell you I was the triage nurse.” 

Draco’s shoulders stiffened at the familiar voice. He’d known it was a possibility. He’d been unable to tear his eyes from her hair as it moved animatedly to invisible turbulence in the break room last week.

“As I’ve said before, it wouldn’t have mattered, Granger.” He replied. 

The witch in question finished signing off the bottom of a chart and then her brown eyes met his. 

“Good.” 

Over the last few years, he’d seen her face a hundred times. They were always in the papers— her, Potter, and Weasley. There was a time before he knew what to do with himself, a time right after the war when he’d made a hobby of keeping track of her post-war trajectory. 

He’d been surprised and guilty-feeling all at once when Hermione walked into trainee orientation. He’d pulled her aside right after, filled with mild desperation and started the long process of apologizing for his wartime actions. 

_“And while I know you have no reason to believe me,” Draco ran his hand through his hair, trying to force the words out before she lost interest, “I don’t want you to ever think that I have it out for you— or that I want you—I don’t want you dead, Granger, I never did.”_

_Merlin, this was easier in his head when she’d been a name to check off on a long list of apologies instead of a living, breathing young woman in front of him. And she was pretty. An extended look at Granger in her element for the first time since he was sixteen was doing horrible things to his pre-determined script._

_“Malfoy,” Hermione began, and her voice didn’t grate against his ears nearly the way it used to. “I’m going to stop you right there, really. Because I appreciate what you’re trying to do here.”_

_The last time he’d been this close to her she’d been filthy, terrified, and screaming, but now she held his gaze with something like patience._

_“Again, as long as you recognize how you’ve been wrong and how horrific your choices were—” she paused._

_Draco tried not to fidget as she continued._

_“Thank you, but I don’t need to talk to you about it. I’m working on moving through—on moving past the war myself. Donate to the psych ward or something more useful.”_

_He’d nodded, a hundred different words fluttering through his mind, but it was too late. After the silence became excessive, Hermione raised an eyebrow and left the conference room._

He hadn’t talked to her since. 

Hermione tapped her wand against her clipboard, sending Andromeda’s diagnostic to the record center at St. Mungo’s, and began to retreat down the hallway.

With her hair braided back in a simple plait and decked in scrubs, she once again struck a heavy contrast between the witch he knew and the girl he’d gone to school with. She held herself better. 

The past be damned, he wanted more of her. 

“Granger?” 

Hermione turned. 

“Yes?”

Draco swallowed, suddenly again at a loss for words when she focused on him. “Thank you,” he managed. “On behalf of my family, I mean.” 

“Of course.” Hermione’s lips were quirked on one side as she fought a smile at his blanket statement. “ Do no harm, and all.”

“I don’t know what my mother would do if— if Andromeda—“ Draco hadn’t meant to elaborate, but the words spilled from his mouth, determined.

Hermione cut him off. “The thought of leaving Teddy Lupin with fewer family members than he already has doesn’t sit well with me either.”

She took a couple steps back in his direction.

“Right.” 

They were feet apart from each other. Draco sat on his haunches against the wall, Hermione stood in the middle of the hallway. Even so, her small height ensured that he wasn’t much shorter sitting the way he was than she was standing. 

Something about the way she was looking down her nose at him currently made him want to press his face into her stomach, wrap his arms around her waist and grovel.

Maybe that was just the exhaustion. 

Hermione cleared her throat again and Draco stood, halving the distance between them.

She gave him a long, funny look that he hated as he got closer, her cautious eyes searching his face for a nonexistent insult. 

“Right,” Draco repeated, “Teddy. Of course it wouldn’t. Listen, Granger—” he faltered. 

Slytherin instincts be damned. 

“Do you want to have dinner sometime?” 

The air around them was still and alive all at once. His heart felt too large for his ribcage suddenly, but Draco was emboldened by her steady eye contact. _Merlin, wasn’t she even more inviting up close?_

“Malfoy, I—“ she replied, just as he burst out to end the silence.

“It’s not a proposal, Granger— don’t think too hard. I don’t know about you, but ever since I started the program I’ve been coming home late and eating alone and then sleeping through the parts of the day where one would regularly take meals and—“ 

“Draco!” 

He stopped his ramble with a large inhale and looked at the witch, conjuring a smirk with muscle memory alone.

“Yes?” 

“I’ll have dinner with you, but only if you shut up— _Merlin’s sake, Malfoy_.” A tinge of exasperation colored her voice. “I, er— I understand how you feel, Mungo’s is insane to plan around unless you’re in it too.” 

“Excellent.” Draco exhaled the word in relief and smiled when it incited a creeping blush on Hermione’s cheeks in return. “Let’s say mine? On Thursday?” 

“Is it always that easy?” Hermione asked, blunt.

“Granger?”

“For you to get all of those women in the Prophet to agree to dinner with you, I mean.”

The mood of the conversation shifted, and Draco felt a flash of anger that he fought quickly to conquer. 

His mother had been setting up dates and dinners in a way to get him to socialize in what she still deemed proper tradition. He’d resisted at first, but relented when she agreed to post-war counseling. 

Given how few hours he already had for personal time, he hated it, even if a few of the witches had been quite pretty.

“Usually there’s a good deal of money that exchanges hands, Granger. What would a third-in-line Bulgarian heiress want to do with a disgraced former Death Eater unless there were galleons involved?” 

Hermione had the tact to look sheepish, but didn’t back down. 

“I should have known you weren’t so desperate for companionship that Narcissa ran out of bru— Oh, but who ever knows.” 

Draco couldn’t resist. “And what does that mean?” 

Hermione’s blush was now creeping farther up her face, and Draco desperately wanted to be closer to her. 

“Everyone knows—“ she blurted, “or at least anyone who went to Hogwarts with you _knows that you don’t like blondes but your last three ‘companions’ have been blonde._ _I actually agree with you there—“_

“Uh-oh,” he interjected. 

The air quotes that she made with her fingers at the word _companions_ made his heartstrings tighten.

 _“— if you dated a blonde it would be horrible on the eyes, you’re so fucking blonde yourself—_ and Merlin forbid a little genetic variation. Purebloods, honestly. So when I saw you with all those blondes—I thought maybe the big Malfoy pressure was on and you didn’t have the luxury to be as choosy.” 

“Granger?”

Hermione had been looking at her shoes, but glanced up at him now. 

“Uh-oh?” She repeated, curious.

“You care, Granger.” 

“Mm, no—

He interrupted. “You pay attention, no, _hypothesize about_ the women that my mother attaches to my arm!” 

—shouldn’t think that’s what I meant, Malfoy, I mean really.” 

“It’s all a PR stunt, Hermione!” Her given name fell from his lips. “It is through the willpower of Narcissa Malfoy and her impeccable coordination skills alone that I ever eat in a public place with a pretty witch.” 

“Really?” 

Hermione knew that she was being teased, she could see it in his eyes, but she played along with his glee at her unsubtle admission. 

“Really. If you’ll allow me the metaphor, I’d tell you that my dance card hasn’t been full since sixth year.” He affirmed. 

The witch mulled it over. 

“I suppose that checks out. Although,” she began, eyes wide. “I’d hate for you to assume I care about your liaisons, Malfoy. You’ll be sorely disappointed.” 

“Mhmm.” Draco shook his head softly. He was elated, impressed at the depth of her self-delusion and determined to get her to admit she’d been watching him. 

He gave in. Stepped a little closer. There was a distinct, bewitching curl that swayed near her temple. Her eyes weren’t muddy brown, but amber, with dark irises and bright pride. 

Hermione’s breath caught in a way she didn’t anticipate, and she learned that Draco Malfoy was riveting when he smiled. 

Draco, no stranger to isolation the past four years, was experiencing newfound joy. _Hermione Granger, of all the witches in Britain, follows my social life?_ It seemed absurd, but the way she couldn’t maintain his attempts at eye contact gave her away. 

“Well?” She shot, trying to fill the pregnant pause.

She’d always been so demanding. For the first time, he gave himself permission to admit that he liked it. 

“Right again, swot.” He said, gaze lingering on her curls with intention. “I’ve never fancied blondes.” 

His chest grazed along her shoulder. Draco couldn’t tell if it was him, or Hermione, or their sudden proximity, but the air rested thick and warm between them.

Hermione wasn’t breathing, stock still. Draco wanted to run the tip of his finger down her spine. 

“Can I touch you?” Simple. 

At his request, she shuddered. Nodded. 

A call burst into the air—

“ _Trainee Malfoy, you are called to Human Resources. Trainee Malfoy, to Human Resources._ ”

Before he could second guess himself and with a reckless abandon that he’d never once possessed, Draco Malfoy kissed Hermione Granger full on the lips. 

The first was soft. The second, hungry. His heart rocketed to his throat. Hers was racing around her ribcage, pressed against his chest. 

Hermione ran her fingers through the hair on the back of his neck and the sensitive spot erupted in gooseflesh. Draco took time to caress the curve of her jaw, noticing how small her face felt in his larger hands. 

Too soon for his liking, she ended their kiss with a groan. “Go, Draco.” 

The HR department needed to talk to him about Andromeda. They’d probably offer him trauma counseling, as they did any time family of hospital staff were admitted. 

She looked beautiful after a snog, lips rosy and eyes bright. They searched his.

“I’ll see you Thursday, Granger.” 

A single bubble of laughter came from Hermione. “Bugger off, Malfoy.” A thrill that was neither joy nor fear, but wild anticipation, danced around her rib cage.

He moved for the exit and smiled, proud of himself for leaving her in a state. 

Later that night, he washed the lingering scent of St. Mungo’s from his hair and floo called Narcissa. Andromeda was stable, but was admitted overnight for observation.

With Hermione’s face filling his mind, Draco collapsed onto his bed with his notepad in hand. It had been waiting near his door when he got home.

_“Greenthumbs,"_ the scrawl greeted him. Draco scoffed lightly through his nose. 

_"I looked at the gardens, and as much as I hate to admit it, you could be right. Sorry for putting the responsibility on you. I called management, and while they agreed with me that you need something more important to whinge about, they agreed on a plan to clear the plot._

_In neutrality,_

_Seven.”_

Draco crumpled their reply in his hands before falling asleep, preoccupied with thoughts of jealous brunettes and pasta dinner. 

Xxx

Despite the fact that he was _Malfoy_ , she’d found herself focused on him more often than not since he’d kissed her. 

It had been too long since she’d had a proper kiss, sure, but goddamnit if her excuses didn’t really matter. 

_She’d wanted to kiss him, and he’d snogged the sparks out of her._

Draco had surprised her. When he spoke, he seemed careful of his words, a far cry from the boy Death Eater she’d known at Hogwarts. Then again, the privilege he was entitled to through his parents had quickly enticed Voldemort to manipulate them like puppets. 

In her view, Draco Malfoy was redeemable in a way that his father was not. 

She was in the locker room. After scrubbing out, she’d changed into a simple olive colored shift dress. She’d been trying to tame her hair for the better part of ten minutes. Some days it truly had a life of its own, and after being in a bun at St. Mungo’s all day, it couldn’t wait to be free. 

Frustrated, she left it wild. 

It was Thursday. 

He was undoubtedly waiting for her outside the hospital, waiting to make good on his offer to side-along her. They’d had similar enough schedules today for their dinner plans to work out. Draco had gotten off his shift about four hours earlier. 

When Hermione spotted him outside on the curb, she smiled. 

He was dressed simply enough, long limbs hidden in dark jeans and a cotton shirt that was forgiving in the ever-increasing summer heat. His hair had grown out since Hogwarts and the way it caught the light reminded her of light dandelion fluff. 

“Malfoy!” 

He whipped around, grin splitting his face. 

“Shhh, Granger!” he held a dramatic finger up to his lip and pantomimed looking around him. “You of all people know how thirsty the Prophet is to snap a picture of me with the ladies.” 

It made her laugh. He’d passed her in the halls of St. Mungo’s several times since their interrupted snog session and hadn’t failed yet to make her smile. He seemed lighter, a bit more carefree. 

“You’re full of it today,” she said, coming to a stop in front of him while trying to not say anything awkward. _Merlin, it had been so long since she’d flirted with anyone_. Hermione spoke softly as Draco reached out a long hand to tuck her curls behind her ear. 

“Hello.” 

“Hello.” 

His eyes glittered in the sun, and her heart beat a little faster as he took her hand. 

“Are you ready?” she asked. 

In reply, the uncomfortable sensation of side-along apparition took her, and the pair were whisked from the hospital apparition point. She enjoyed the brief feeling of his solid body pressed up against hers as they moved through magical spacetime. 

When her feet were on solid ground, Hermione chuckled at the coincidence. 

They were in front of her building. 

“Andromeda was discharged today.” Draco said lightly. 

Hermione stopped mentally calculating the probability that she and Malfoy lived in the same trainee housing building and replied. 

“Thank Merlin. She’s a strong woman, Andromeda.” The relief in her voice was audible. “I needed her shoulder to cry on more than once after the war when I couldn’t turn to Molly Weasley.” 

“She is that,” Draco nodded. He noticed the holes in the context she provided, and resolved to ask her questions about it later. “It would have devastated my mother if—“ 

“If?” 

“Well, if it had gone the other way I suppose.” 

“If your aunt had died?” 

They were moving through the hallways now, and Hermione made quick work of the familiar stairs. It was funny, realizing that she’d been living within shouting distance of Draco Malfoy for the last several weeks. 

“Bloody hell.” He continued. “Yeah, if she’d died.”

“I always find that—,” Hermione began distractedly, intending on delivering a speech to Draco about meditation and mortality. They’d stopped in front of what she could only infer was his door, and there, right at nose level, was a number that made her pause. 

He was currently unwarding a door adorned with a large, brass, number six. 

“Sorry, what do you always find?” He’d pocketed his wand and turned the knob. 

He was her neighbor. Her eloquent, infuriating, green-thumbed neighbor was Draco Malfoy. 

It was suddenly so clear. 

She sprung through the door after him and slapped his chest.

“You could have knocked on my door the first time, you git! But no— you had to go and be all dramatic with your _neutered moondew_ and twenty-three galleon notepad.” 

To his credit, Draco looked thoroughly shocked. Then he figured it out rather quickly.

“Twenty-one, actually. Smashing bargain, I’ll have one sent next door.” 

Hermione laughed, incredulous. 

“You’re ridiculous.” She said, looking around the apartment that was a mirror of her own. “Also, it _smells amazing_ in here. I can’t believe it was you the whole time.” 

“Your garden was atrocious and problematic.” Draco had leaned against the island in the middle of the kitchen. “I have no regrets.” 

“It wasn’t even mine!” Her hair whipped around her as she turned back to him, angry before realizing that he was laughing with her. 

She ran her hands through her hair and resisted the urge to retort combatively. They stared at each other, basking in the coincidences of the universe for a moment, before he held a hand out to her where she stood in the middle of the room. 

“Come here.” 

“Why should I?” she retorted. 

He barked out a laugh that turnt the corners of her mouth up. 

“ _Merlin_ , Hermione, who’s ridiculous now? _Come here_.” 

If his voice hadn’t sounded so enticing, she told herself she would have resisted longer. 

His palm was warm in hers, and she lay her other hand flat against his chest. When Hermione met his eyes, her lips parted gently. _Damn her if he wasn’t stupidly handsome up close._

This time, she closed the distance. 

When their lips touched, Draco rumbled low in his chest, drawing her against him with a grip that was both soft and firm. He tasted like she remembered, and when their kiss deepened she felt a well of anticipation build in her chest. 

He withdrew only to pepper softer kisses against her neck. 

“It’s driven me mad,” he began with a groan. “Seeing you and not being able to kiss you again.” 

“Fuck.” 

The expletive fell from her mouth as Draco’s hands began kneading her low back on his way down to her bum. He spun them around, burying his hands in her hair with a kiss once more. He felt strong against her, she realized. Now that her body had the time to feel his, she took advantage. 

She could feel his heartbeat against her palms, felt the desire that he had for her in his kiss. There was a desperate edge to the way that his hands roamed, lighting every part of her that he touched along the way. 

He wasn’t kissing her the way that a man kissed when he was only interested in a one-night stand. Draco kissed her in a way that she’d only felt a handful of times before, with a reverent intimacy that made her feel like they were connected, in sync somehow despite it all. 

She wondered how long he’d fancied her. 

The same island that he’d leaned against earlier now pressed into the curve of her back before he hoisted her bum up onto the edge of it. 

“You smell fantastic.” His nose was buried in her hairline, and she melted when his tongue caressed the curve of her earlobe. 

“Fuck, Draco—” she began, but he chose that moment to grind against her and the rest of her words died on a moan. 

Hermione’s hands shook as she tried to undo his shirt buttons and wrap her leg around his waist for leverage at the same time. She vanished it nonverbally instead, greedy fingers finding the expanse of his chest with haste. 

“Not fair,” he muttered, breaking their kiss. He met her eyes, pupils dilated, and raised a challenging eyebrow. 

Her shift dress vanished, leaving her topless in the practical thong she’d put on after showering in the locker room. She smiled, biting her lip proudly when his gaze dropped to her exposed breasts. 

“ _Merlin_. Definitely not fair.” Draco repeated, reaching out a thumb to drag it along the sensitive underside of one. 

Hermione shrugged in a way that she knew made her nipples bounce enticingly and was instantly rewarded by the feeling of his body against hers as he set to devouring her again. 

This time, his hands worked a steady path south, pulling her body against his with a hungry grasp until his fingers played with the remaining fabric that she wore. 

They made hasty eye contact as Hermione keened against his hand. 

“Hermione, would you—” he began, before she cut him off. She wanted him. He’d wound her up long enough, and her lionheart took charge of her mouth. 

“Feel free to have me as the appetizer if you like.” 

Draco growled against her mouth, and ripped the scrap of fabric away from her body. He pushed her back gently onto the cool surface of the island countertop, the gentle motion a harsh contrast to the intense feeling of his jeans grinding against her newly-exposed sex. 

He bent at the waist, and planted an open mouthed kiss against her core. 

“Draco, _yes_.” Hermione hissed at the sudden sensation. He didn’t let up, but instead reached a hand up between her legs to tease her nipple. 

He made masterful work of her orgasm, sliding two fingers inside of her that her body accepted needfully. Hermione felt the flush riding high on her throat as he sucked her clitoris into his mouth, and by the time that she was coming undone completely, she’d abandoned any sense of hesitation and was riding his hand with near-mindless pleasure. 

The sight of him between her legs rekindled her lust as soon as he withdrew, and Hermione propped herself up on her elbows. 

“You’re really good at that,” she remarked as her hands found his belt. 

He smirked in that infuriating way, but the effect was different when she tasted herself on his lips. 

“Enthusiasm helps.” Draco grinned. “I never in an eternity imagined that I’d be fucking Hermione Granger’s quim with my face while she came on my kitchen counter.” 

Merlin help her, but she fucking whimpered. It really had been too long. 

His voice dripped with sex, and she made final work of his denims. 

His cock rendered her momentarily speechless. It was, like the rest of him, frustratingly perfect. 

She whistled when he took it in his own hand, pumping it twice and treating her to a visage that seared itself into the soft tissues of her memory. 

“Fuck, Malfoy.” 

He lifted a saucy eyebrow. “Yes, Granger?” 

She scooted closer to the edge of the countertop and replaced his hands with her own. 

“Oh, no,” she said, playing with fire and enjoying the soft expletives that were falling from his mouth as she stroked him. “That was a command, not a compliment.” 

He broke, pulling her off the counter roughly and settling them both down onto an incredibly soft carpet in the middle of his living space. 

He lined their bodies up and looked down at her where she was sprawled beneath him. The moment lasted one beat, and then two, and then Hermione couldn’t take the tease. She hooked a foot behind his bum and pulled him into her with a satisfied moan. 

Draco shuddered at the feeling of her around him, and bit down into the flesh of her shoulder with a lustful gasp. 

“ _Fuck, Hermione_ —” she flexed around him, and all thoughts left his brain. He began to move, grabbing her face with a touch of roughness and kissing her once more as he slid in and out of her heat. 

“You’re incredible.” His praise made her blush in spite of the fact that he was inside her. “I’m never going to be able to go to work again, let alone come home knowing that you exist on the other side of my walls.” 

She laughed, an act that made them both groan as her muscles pressed in against his cock.

The reminder that they were neighbors seemed so far away as she pushed his willing shoulder and flipped them easily. The new angle as she rode him drove her ever closer to the edge, and gave her the advantage of watching his face as she thrust against him, chasing release. 

The way that he was looking up at her made her want to drive him insane, and she paused to position her body in a way that held the sensitive head of his cock just inside her while she popped her hips with fast precision. 

Draco’s eyes rolled back in his head at her ministrations and maintained a punishing grip on her hips.

“Hermione, if you don’t stop that I’m—” 

“You’re what?” she interrupted innocently, switching back and taking the full length of him inside her once more. 

Draco growled at her cheek and sat up so that they were chest to chest. 

He kissed her aggressively and wrapped one of his large hands around her throat. 

“I said,” he thrust up into her body once more with the athleticism of youth. “ _That if you don’t stop, I’m going to come inside your pretty little pussy, Granger._ ” 

“God, yes— _fuck, yes_ ,” waves of pleasure had crept up on her and she babbled hotly into his mouth.

His words combined with the hand that he dropped to rub circles against her clit ensured that once more she was the one coming, but this time she was spasming around his cock. The sensation was overwhelming and he moaned, redoubling his pace and following her quickly over the edge.

For an erotic moment, the air was thick with satisfied breath. Draco squeezed her thigh with one hand and held her head in the other. 

It wasn’t until much later when she was belly-laughing at something stupid he’d done, wrapped in one of his posh bathroom robes and thoroughly satiated from their meal, that she realized that she’d spent an adolescence forced to underestimate their chemistry. 

He’d never been an option. 

Since the first time they’d met, they’d fought, their genuine intellectual and physical compatibility obscured by the hateful dogmas of past generations. 

She watched him pour her a glass of wine stark naked and smiled. 

**Author's Note:**

> 💋 This work is part of the Taste of Smut Fest, a Harry Potter-centered fest dedicated to the five senses: taste, touch, smell, hearing, and sight. 
> 
> If you’ve enjoyed this work, please do shower our content creators with kudos and comments! 💌
> 
> [Please check out the fest's tumblr for more posts and updates](https://tasteofsmut.tumblr.com/)


End file.
